


Like Some Soft Minister of Dreams

by Other_Pens



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Regency, Regency Romance, Snow, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Other_Pens/pseuds/Other_Pens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred & George take a walk in the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Some Soft Minister of Dreams

_February, 1800_

"I would not have bet money that you would be the _slower_ of the two of us, but plainly I should have done," said Freddie, shaking her head as she waited for George to finish buttoning his coat and pulling on his gloves. 

"I still think it's too cold for you to be going out..."  
 

"Nonsense! It's stopped snowing, and I could not be wrapped up any warmer than I am!" cried Freddie, who, well into the latter months of expecting their first child, and positively drowning in several layers of fine wool and fur, it must be said, looked rather like a small, round bird which had puffed out its feathers against the elements. Only her face now peered out above her fluffy grey fur collar and beneath the matching trim on her winter hat, which George now reached out to pull down lower over her eyes. She batted his hands away impatiently. "I should like to see where I am going, George--I dare say part of my forehead can brave the outdoors for a little while."  
 

George let her go, knowing she was determined to do it, but made certain he had pulled her hand over the bend of his arm as they set out for their walk in the bright beauty of the morning and the still, white world which gleamed beneath its covering of thick, fresh snowfall.  
 

The Haverleighs made slow progress through the snow where there _should_ have been a path, to the edge of the woods. They wandered along the line between trees and meadow, talking over everything and nothing, and sometimes lapsing into happy silence; their breath curling into misty plumes before them as they picked their way between shadowed drifts and brighter hollows where the snow was already melting away beneath the pale, wintry sun.  
 

"Take care you are not walking too fast, Freds," said George. "Perhaps we have gone far enough for one day."  
 

"Far enough? I can still see the house!" protested Freddy, the pent-up energies of winter days spent housebound and the prospect of her approaching confinement making her keen to spend every minute she could in the fresh air. "A little further, George, please--" Knowing he would not--could not--forbid her, despite his careful concern, she turned to go on without him, and, in her eagerness, set her foot squarely upon a patch of icy stone beneath a thin crust of snow, and with a whoop, fell backwards into a thick drift piled at the base of a tree.  
 

"Freddie!" yelled George, scrambling to the prone figure half-buried in snow, and nearly losing his footing on that same sheet of ice and rock before he reached her and began to half-dig, half-brush her out of her snowy cocoon. "Answer me, Freddie, and tell me if you're alright? Can you speak at all?"  
 

She _could_ speak, if she could stop laughing, first. She found her husband's hand and gripped it tightly, then pulled. His panic and the ice made it easy work for her to tug him down beside her in the pile of cold, crunching fluff, and he landed with a grunt. He looked at her, bewildered, before there was a soft, sliding sort of sound, and then a muted _thump_ as the tree above them shook its branches and deposited several more clumps of its accumulated snow onto their heads, rendering them nearly invisible in the landscape, but for bits of wool and fur, boots and gloves, and their glowing faces as they laughed--Freddie with near-hysteria at their predicament, and George with the good humour of relief at finding her unharmed.

At long last, the pealing laughs left Freddie breathless and increasingly aware of the cold and damp. She half-rolled to one side, and then, more hesitantly, to the other.

"George...I think you must help me to stand," she said. "I feel rather like an overturned beetle...and righting myself seems as if it might be quite beyond my capabilities, at present."

"Oh, we live here now," said George, teasingly cross with her for dragging him into the snow, once he was assured of her well-being. "They can come and find us in spring, when all the snow will have melted away." The testiness of his response was belied by the way he reached over to brush the melting snowflakes from her reddened cheeks, and Freddie gave him her most winning smile.

"...and when people write to congratulate you on the birth of your first-born child, should they direct their letters to this snowbank?" she asked. "Or perhaps these woods, given the impermanence of snowbanks?" 

"The woods...a capital idea, my dear."

"I suppose it's only fitting that the child be born beneath a tree," mused Freddie, patting the swell of her belly with her gloved hands. 

"...fitting?"

"Well, I like to think they were conceived beneath a tree." 

"Con--" George shut his eyes with a light groan and let his head fall back against the snow, but he couldn't fight the sheepish smile that crept onto his face before he made himself sit up and floundered out of the snow drift, threatening to send Freddie into another fit of giggles. "Right, you wicked minx, I see there is no other solution but to take you home and lock you up safely indoors."

Freddie reached up both hands to him, not one bit chastened, as her newfound obedience merely matched her own wishes for the time being. 

"Please, Mr. Haverleigh. It will be most amusing to watch you try."


End file.
